For my birthday, I had a few friends over, and we ended up playing Castle Panic (one of my favorites!). The Professor and I were the only ones who had experience with this game, and we suggested we play with our cards face up on the table. This let us talk out a lot of the strategies and answer questions the new players had about their cards. We had some unlucky Monster draws at the beginning of the game (Giant Boulders, Flaming Boulders, Plagues, and Draw Additional Monsters), but found the Wizard Deck to be extremely helpful in dealing with the repercussions. Smurfette also had a few awesome turns that helped keep the monsters at bay. Things were beginning to look bleak, though. We had three walls left (all had been rebuilt at some point and one reinforced), and just two Towers (one being the Wizard Tower), but we managed to pull off a win. Mermaid thought it was fitting that I dealt the final blow, it being my birthday and all.